Edinburgh Festival gets £100,000 boost from Homecoming

Published on Friday 9 January 2009 20:57

THE Edinburgh International Festival has won another major hike in its public funding – to help celebrate Scotland's Year of Homecoming.

Figures obtained by The Scotsman reveal the country's cultural showpiece is one of the biggest winners from the 5 million total handout under the auspices of Homecoming, a series of celebrations marking 250 years since the birth of Robert Burns.

The 100,000 for the EIF is the biggest grant for an existing event in the Homecoming programme and dwarves deals for events including the Tattoo, the World Pipe Band Championship and the Cowal Gathering.

Details of the award have emerged just weeks after MSPs raised concerns the EIF was being "tartanised" to justify increases in funding. The latest grant must be spent on shows fitting Homecoming's "themes".

The Scotsman can reveal that the Scottish Government has also given another 100,000 towards The Gathering, billed as being "one of the largest clan gatherings in history". A total of 400,000 in public funding will now help pay for the July event in Edinburgh's Holyrood Park.

Other big winners include T in the Park, which will get 140,000 for a one-day festival at Glasgow's SECC in November; the Open Golf Championship in Troon, which gets 80,000 for a day of Homecoming celebrations, and 75,000 for an exhibition of Burns-inspired work by artists such as Tracy Emin and Peter Howson.

Celtic Connections, the music festival which starts next week, has won 90,000 – roughly half of its annual subsidy from Glasgow City Council – to stage a string of Homecoming-inspired events. Some 140,000 will go to official festivities in Alloway, the Ayrshire birthplace of Burns.

Around 300 events are in the Homecoming programme, although not all have received funding from EventScotland, the body which decided on the grants. All events had to celebrate Burns, golf, whisky, great minds and innovation, or Scotland's heritage and culture.

An EventScotland spokesman said unfunded events had been included in the programme based on their "relevance" to the Homecoming themes and their ability to attract extra visitors.

The latest boost for the EIF comes just 12 months after it won an extra 600,000 in funding from the city council, the Scottish Arts Council and the Scottish Government.